The National Book Award winners were announced last night, and the winner in the Fiction category is a mystery: The Round House by Louise Erdrich.
"I would like to accept this in recognition of the grace and the endurance of native women," said Erdrich. Though fiction, her book is about what she described as an "ongoing injustice", detailing a crime on the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. Erdrich is of Native American descent, and began her acceptance speech in the Ojibwe language.
More about the book below.
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The Round House
Louise Erdrich
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.
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